


tried your love at five in the morning

by unsernameinuse



Series: A Thousand Ways (Zayn/Harry) [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Unrequited Love, hopeless crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 03:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18379802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsernameinuse/pseuds/unsernameinuse
Summary: Zayn never knew why it wasn’t Liam. Or even Niall. Or Gemma. Anyone else.He can’t help but be glad for it, though, because it means that even when Harry spends his time dreaming about Louis, it was with his head in Zayn’s lap.





	tried your love at five in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> this isn’t real, i don’t own or know any pop stars.
> 
> warning for fun, unpredictable tense switches bc its late and i couldn’t make up my mind.
> 
> title from “down on love” by Kelly Rowland.

That first year had been perfect. Terrifying, ridiculous, an absolute madhouse, but perfect in it’s own way.

Sure, Zayn had always seen himself more as Usher than a backstreet boy, and a little something in the back of his mind bugged him about that. But at the time, he could ignore it.

He had clicked immediately with the silly ball of fun that was Niall, the loud nonstop entertainer that was Louis, and the sweet-but just as much a showman-Liam.

Harry, he didn’t quite get.

Quiet and sweet like Liam, but a little softer, more sensitive. And while the rest of them bounded around yelling and joking and looking for attention, Harry would laugh quietly to the side and somehow grab the spotlight without even trying.

From the beginning, Harry had been the one people were obsessed with, the one they adored. Admittedly, that view of him got there before any real connection between them did, and inevitably colored Zayns perception. It wasn’t jealousy, exactly, but maybe a little resentment. It would wane when he saw the shit Harry went through with the press, but bubble up again when Harry made an offhand entitled comment or some internet Mom thought he was an angel and Zayn was the root of all evil.

 

Harry too fell into bonding with the boys. He didn’t share as much at first, and even as he got more comfortable he still held back on personal details. Like the fact that sometimes he liked boys the way he liked girls. No time ever seemed like the right time to mention it. Maybe no time ever would.

Besides, if he told them they would ask if he liked any of them. The done thing would be to say no, and scoff at their presumptions. But Harry couldn’t do that, because boys, girls, in-between or otherwise, he always fell at least halfway in love with everyone he knew.

It wasn’t his fault Niall’s eyes were really blue and Liam had soft looking lips or that Louis and Zayn were both heartbreakingly human and surreally beautiful.

Zayn with his tongue between his teeth and his silly voices, his soft eyes with their hypnotic lashes. Louis’ squinty blue gaze and crooked smile, the shining swoop of his hair and the cutting lash of his tongue. Harry was far more than halfway in love with him. He knew that this, although he tried not to admit it to himself, was why he became a pathetic mess of pent-up jealousy when Louis and Zayn started to grow close.

It made sense that they would. They were both beautiful and silly, often full of strange energy and willing to take a dare. Zayn had admitted early on that he was a bit anxious, but he never let it hold him back. On the contrary, he seemed to actively defy it. This spirit of rebelliousness turned he and Louis into a team, them against their demons. Sometimes they got so close that Harry wanted to claw them away from each other and then burrow into the space between them.

He knew that his jealousy was irrational. Louis adored Zayn but he adored Harry too, sometimes just as much as Harry did him. Harry couldn’t tell if it was in a brotherly way, like he said, or if it was in an I-want-to-lick-more-than-just-your-face way. Regardless, Harry soaked it up like a flower in the sun. For a while his whole world was painted over with Louis, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

 

This was a less than ideal situation for Zayn, who around this same time came to realize he was becoming less jealous of Harry for getting girls he liked and more jealous of the girls that got to get him.

They stayed on the same buses, down the same halls, sometimes even in the same rooms. So it was inevitable that Zayn would learn intimately the helpless, guttural choke of Harry Styles in orgasm. He knew the red of Harry’s skin when he answered the door at midnight and said he was “a little busy”. He knew the low, soft rumble of Harry’s voice as he spoke to those women as if they were the most precious beings in earth.

Then he realized, with a twist of panic in his gut, that he wasn't just shrugging off these sights and images like a good straight friend. Instead, he was cataloging them; shelving them in parts of his brain that surely could have been used for something more important.

There were labels for his lips and all his sounds and the way his hands curled around a hip. And most disturbingly, the exhilarated sigh of Harry’s voice the morning after his first night with what's-his-face. It took everything Zayn had not to snarl at that self-satisfied roadie every time their paths crossed. He couldn't stop clenching his teeth until the man that made Harry go soft and feral all at once finally left the tour.

But then, of course, Harry went right back to obsessing over Louis, who didn’t seem to notice despite his renewed fervor.

The worst part was, nothing else changed. He and Harry still didn’t get along, still didn’t understand each other, still struggled to be anything but awkward when they were alone in the same room. Those instances made it nearly impossible for Zayn to convince himself that he was just mistaking friendship for something else.

 

It was one night, a hotel night, post show and Zayn was alone in his room with three blunts rolled up in place of evening plans. In the hall, he could hear the other boys carrying on with the crew. Niall was probably practically having a party in his room, but Zayn felt less like parties and more like getting high and lost in the TV.

That was the plan, anyway. Until a heavy, lethargic knock sounded on the wood of his door. It was Harry, slightly tipsy and looking like he had been run over by a truck and then told his puppy died.

“Hey,” Zayn said in greeting. Then, “You alright?”

“No,” Harry said, tumbling past Zayn and into a crumpled mess onto the bed. Zayn blinked at the spot in the hallway where he had just been, then closed the door on the raucous sounds of Niall with too many fellow irishmen.

He went back to the bed and maneuvered around Harry into his earlier position, slouched down in a pile of pillows and surrounded by scrunched up blankets. Harry stayed in his own world for a while, twisting himself up into a ball of sheets and misery and looking dejected.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Zayn asked reluctantly after Harry’s heavy sighs became too much to ignore.

“Not really,” said Harry. Still in his sheet-burrito form, he wiggled over and dropped his head onto Zayns thigh with a heavy _thump._ His skull felt strange resting there, warm and too soft to be a part of a skeleton. Zayn felt himself want to tangle his fingers in that hair, and marveled at his own self control when he didn’t.

“Okay,” he replied. He took another pull off of his blunt, holding the smoke in as long as he could before letting it out in short, controlled puffs.

“Mm?” Harry held out one hand, wordlessly asking. Zayn handed it over, refusing to acknowledge the way their hands touched. He also refused to be charmed by Harry’s big green eyes crossing as he inhaled, his mouth curling around the tip in a way that brought out his dimples.

“It’s just Louis,” Harry said finally, passing back the blunt with only a little coughing.

“What about him?” Zayn asked, reluctantly.

“Nothin he did,” said Harry. “I mean, I dunno. It’s me, really. Sometimes it's like I won’t ever get over him.”

“Huh,” said Zayn. “Didn’t know you were trying to.” He hoped the bitterness didn’t show in his tone.

Harry covered his eyes with one hand. “Good God I’m pathetic,” he said in a hushed voice, too sad to pass it off as a joke.

“Hey,” Zayn said, resting his arm lightly across Harry’s torso as a reminder that he was still there. “Come on, don’t do that. We’ve all been there. You're not any more pathetic than the rest of us.”

“Right,” Harry said, dropping his hand and reaching for the blunt again. “As if you’d know anything about it.” He stretched awkwardly to smoke without disturbing his blanket burrito, laying his body out over Zayns thighs in the process.

Right.

Zayn was only sitting in a hotel room feeling the world get farther and farther away, drifting upward without a tether and unable to stop his mind from fixating on the off-limits boy in his lap. It was the smoke talking, but not really.

Harry was made off the softest, most complimentary creams and peaches and pinks, a canvas that he swore he’d cover in ink one day.There was no part of him that Zayn wouldn’t put his lips on if given half a chance; every scar, every mole, and every freckle. And instead of pulling him away from that train of thought, the high was carrying him towards it like a leaf in the current. He drifted closer and closer and couldn’t help reaching, gently resting one hand on Harry’s arm and watching the contrasts in their skin as they breathed.

“Of course I know about it,” he said, probably much too late. “Everybody does.”

Harry shrugged, turning abruptly onto his back and looking up at the ceiling. He passed the blunt back to Zayn. “If you say so,” he said.

The edges of his eyes had begun to go a little pink and Zayn felt trapped in that spread of color, then in his eyelashes and the creases of skin in his eyelid. He was being sucked slowly but surely into all of Harry’s little details.

“...Zayn?”

He snapped back to the moment, realizing he had been dragging his thumb back and forth as if Harry’s skin was made of velvet, and staring into Harry’s eyes in a way that probably wasn’t very reassuring.

“Sorry,” he said, stilling his hands and focusing on being less of a mess of desire. He hoped that came off as something a friend would do to comfort another friend: lovingly stroke any piece of exposed skin and stare supportively into their soul. Like a bro. Or, at least, like someone who was just very very high.

Harry looked at him for too long, but there was no telling how much time truly passed. It could have been five seconds or a full minute, Zayn just knew he held his breath and hoped Harry didn’t see the truth. Whether he did or not, he broke the silence by holding out his hand and saying: “I’m not high enough. Give it.”

  


Somehow, for some reason, Zayn became the person Harry could talk to about this crush. They still didn’t quite work; they rubbed each other the wrong way and their pieces didn’t fit. But when they got high together on a bus eating up the miles or in a hotel room that looked just like the last one, the jagged edges would soften.

Zayn never knew why it wasn’t Liam. Or even Niall. Gemma. Anyone else. He couldn’t help but be glad for it, though, because it meant that even when Harry spent his time dreaming about Louis, he did so with his head in Zayn’s lap. And when Zayn was two layers of reality away from his hand in Harry’s hair, he didn't have to think about what it that meant.

 

More than anyone else around them, Zayn can understand exactly how Harry feels. Harry never asks him why, although every now and again he makes a wild guess. They’re always women, and Zayn always rolls his eyes and snatches the blunt back before he says no.

 

Inch by inch, day by day, as they recorded and toured and partied and Louis fell even further in love with Eleanor, Harry changed. He became stronger, quieter, more difficult to rile and tease. He began to cover his skin in the tattoos he had threatened in the beginning.

Zayn changed too. He found it harder and harder to stand on stages singing songs he wasn’t allowed to help write. He found himself with less and less will to be the person everyone seemed to want, but at the same time without the fight to be anything else. But there were too many people counting on him for breakdowns to be an option.

The talks were the only thing that didn’t change. They were fewer and farther between, and they danced around the subjects they probably should have talked about. Like Harry’s name in the papers and Zayn’s precarious engagement and the way their ribs became so easily visible through their skin.

Instead, they smoked blunts and talked about love. Even Louis, who Zayn tells everything, doesn’t know quite as much about the way he and Perrie’s paradise is falling apart. He and Louis get high too, but there’s something a little easier about how it feels when he and Harry are sprawled across a tour bus couch or a hotel bed, high enough to shout in whispers. He thinks it isn’t because of the friendships themselves, because he’s closer to Louis in every way. It’s just a part of who Harry is, that if you let him he’ll make you feel comfortable and wanted and okay with just being yourself.

And it didn’t hurt that the talks with Harry, unlike the ones with Louis, never made it into the daylight. Things were different in the morning, when they were sober. Zayn preferred it that way.

 

High out of his mind and alone with Harry in the dark was the only time Zayn could let himself think about that thing that he knew he shouldn’t think about. That thing being the broad spread of Harry’s shoulders and the stretch of his lips around a yawn. The way he’s a little in love with all of Harry’s pieces.

 

Harry knows. He has to know. He’s caught Zayn's eyes following the lines of his body on far too many occasions for him to _not_ know. But he doesn’t ever call it out, or try to discuss it. Sometimes he holds Zayn's eyes, and they both stare in silence and wonder if one of them is going to speak it. They never do.

Harry knows, but he must not feel the same way. It makes sense, really. Harry likes boys, but he likes boys like Louis. Boys who are stars with bright eyes and thick thighs. He doesn’t want Zayn in all his skinny, insecure anxiety. It doesn’t matter how many times they call him gorgeous, he can still feel that shy kid from Bradford shrinking away, terrified of the big wild world and so unwilling to show it.

Harry’s silence feels obvious and inevitable, not only proof of the truth in Zayn’s insecurities, but a reminder of the reality he’s living in. It’s not as if they’re in the position to be the type of men that love each other, not outside of the moments label-crafted for a ravenous fan base.

So he’s the sounding board for Harry’s inner torment, at the same time being put through his own. Because he knows the world they live in, how much it hurts to keep feelings to yourself when sometimes it seems like they want to scrape and claw their way up your throat and out into the open. He knows how it gets harder every day you don’t speak it. So he listens.

 

They don’t necessarily become friends, not the way Zayn thinks of friends anyway. There’s too much of a gulf between their worlds, too many things they avoid mentioning and can’t understand.

So they talk around that gulf, and Zayn rests his hands in places that allow him respite from the inner urge to touch, but are ambiguous enough for denial of those same urges. Harry pretends not to notice.

 

They aren’t friends, But they are something.

There will come a time when Zayn can’t take it anymore but for now, it has to be enough.

  


**Author's Note:**

> i thought i had to explore on how zayn harry might seemed so close but 'not really have a relationship'. 
> 
> thanks for reading! comments temporarily banish my sadness <3


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